Wireless networks make a number of tradeoffs when bringing internet protocol (IP) applications onto the wireless medium. In some cases, the choice to not retransmit lost multicast packets is implemented due to the many recipients of each packet. Due to the higher bit error rate of wireless networks versus traditional wireline networks, this can result in unacceptable packet loss and degraded application performance. As an example, multicast or broadcast video in large scale wireless networks can easily exceed 5% packet loss which is many orders of magnitude higher than traditional wireline networks. Due to application characteristics of sending large numbers of packets to represent atomic chunks of information (e.g., keyframes), an application such as multicast video may experience >90% keyframe loss as a result of this 5% packet loss.
In some application scenarios, this provides unacceptable application performance. Traditional solutions to conceal the effects of this packet loss include substantially modified codecs or substantially modified delivery tunnels for these packets. Unfortunately, both solutions typically involve substantial software modifications and in some implementations additional hardware functionality at the client (i.e. laptop, PDA, smartphone) side.